Commercial clarinetist, flutist and saxophonist in the San Francisco Bay Area and elementary school Band Director:

So far I've played the Bravo a couple of times on alto, and once on clarinet. I like them so far - they seem to have done a good job of getting the balance right. On alto the 4 seems to approximate the strength I'm used to best. I'm playing that on a Jody Jazz HR 6. I have an HR 7 too, and I might experiment with a softer strength on that one. The clarinet reeds felt good, generally, but I think the right strength for me is right between 3 and 3 1/2. I'll try them again. I'd like to try the alto reeds in a rehearsal to check the projection - I can probably do that next week. So far I like the tone, and they seem a bit less buzzy than the Légères. Anyway, thanks for thinking of me, and for sending the Bravos to try!

So, here's what happened. Wednesday I first tried everything in three new boxes of my usual Vandoren 3.5 blue box and found a couple of potentially perfect reeds and about six other very good ones. A very lucky day. After that, I opened the Bravo box of ( wow, black!) reeds (containing one each of 2.5,3.3.5,4 and one duplicate). I first tried the 3.5. To make a long story short, I was really surprised! The tone was rounded and sweet, not one-dimensional. The response was just fine. I had to go up a strength to the 4 get some resistance. Now, to be honest, I am not going to switch to this type of reed for any kind of solo concert, but I can really see this as a reed which which any clarinet player might reasonably carry as an emergency backup, and easily rely on as an alternative. That's amazing! Not a plastic sound like Fibercane, Forestone, Legere, etc.

Freelance saxophonist in Tampa, Florida

I spent about an hour testing the various strength reeds on the 5-6 alto mouthpieces I have/use and tried different ligatures (Lakey Compass, Rovner, Drake, etc. ).

What I discovered: - different mouthpieces responded responded differently to different reeds...I found the 2, 2.5, and 3 reeds worked best on the mouthpieces that I have....but think the 3.5 and 4 would work well. All that being said...my overall impression of your synthetic reeds are that they are THE BEST I've played!

Obviously we always compare synthetic reeds to cane reeds. I have played most of the major brands (Fibercane, Harry Hartmann, Forestone...). And they all worked...but the tone/sound of all those fell short of sounding like my cane reeds. Not the case with your reeds, as the sound/response I experienced was extremely close to cane.

I am sold on your new reeds. One thing you did for me was to provide me a Sample box of all the available strengths. I think this is something you should sell so a new user can sample the different strength reeds of their setup(s) to determine which reed strength works best for them. Then they can order exactly what they need.

When I have purchased other synthetic reeds which are NOT inexpensive I have been disappointed as I didn't find a reed that worked for me and could not justify spending $100+ to order the full set of available reeds.

Maybe some of those would have worked....but I'll never know because of the cost to find out.

Just a suggestion as I was able to try all the strengths and now know that three of the reeds match 4-5 of my mouthpieces.

My only question for you is when will you have soprano, tenor, and bari reeds available? I'd also like to have my clarinet friends try your reeds...

I am really grateful for your generosity in sending these reeds to me....and plan to "spread the word" with my local (Tampa/Orlando area) sax friends as well as posting my experience on Facebook if you're cool with that.

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